


Nor the Battle to the Strong

by Zeragii



Category: Les tuniques bleues, Undertale
Genre: American Civil War, Arguing, Bad Weather, Chara loves to hate Sans, Crossover, Horses, Minor Injuries, Possession, Reset After Reaching the Surface, more tags will be added as we go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-10-14 07:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeragii/pseuds/Zeragii
Summary: "If you're going to do it, than do it," he hissed, barely above a whisper. His eye sockets opened again, and he stared right into the human's gaze, returning her hate. "But it's just going to be the same. How many times can you do something, over and over, before you lose interest?" His question was more of frustration than of actual curiosity, but it only proved to make Chara all the more pleased."That's just it, Sansy. I am bored. The same old same old isn't going to cut it this time, so I'm going to mix things up a bit. Add a few curves in the road. Won't that be fun?""You can't do this!" Undyne yelled, stepping forward in front of Sans protectively."Oh, but I can. Time and space are nothing to me. I can reach far into the past, and far into the future. I can drag something from places you can only dream of." Chuckle. "And I think I will. This host was destructive, she turned your whole world upside down, and she's only a little girl. Imagine what I could do with an adult..."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!  
> I once promised myself that I would never write a crossover fanfic. That was because, in all the ones I had ever read, I had been disappointed. But then I read a few that somehow managed to mix two fandoms in a way that not only made sense, but made for an exciting and creative adventure. And I was amazed that it could be pulled off. I saw it as a friendly challenge that I wanted to give a shot. And so, here I am.
> 
> I doubt I have to do much explaining in regard to Undertale. It is a game in which a child falls down into a world underground, where monsters, trapped by mankind by magic, have been living for a very long time. In the game, you control the child's actions, so that you can have various endings, saving the monsters, leaving the monsters behind, or killing them all as you go. This child has the power to skip backwards in time (called reloads) if killed, or can "reset" to the very beginning of their arrival underground (accurately called a reset). However, there is another factor I must mention. Another child, long since dead, can take control of this newcomer, if the child shows to have killing tendancies. But that of course all relies on you the player, and how you play the game.
> 
> In this story, Frisk, the child I first mentioned, has done a number of resets. Going through the Underground and trying out different endings. But she made a mistake. Bored, she may have tried a route where she killed everyone. That made her susceptable to the power of Chara, the second (dead) child's power. Chara then used Frisk to do one Genocide route after another, until finally the chain was broken, and Frisk was able to go through one final time, save the monsters, and bring them all to freedom on the Surface. But the question is...is Chara gone for good?
> 
> As for the second part of this crossover, I don't expect many to know the characters, so I will treat them with as much detail throughout the story as I can. Chesterfield and Blutch are both characters from a French comic called "Les Tuniques Bleues" or, translated, "The BlueCoats". They are soldiers from the American Civil War. A team of two, and more frenemies and true friends, they have had many adventures through the series, some of which are quite dramatic.
> 
> Soooo, why would I choose such two drastically different things to mix for a crossover? Well, I wrote a paper once that, if written correctly, you can help the readers believe just about anything. And I'd be a hypocrite not to try out this theory myself.
> 
> Special thanks to my dear friend and beta-reader for this story, Sgt-Major Reynolds from Fanfiction.net!
> 
> Alright, let's see if this theory can actually be pulled off. ^^ But first, how about a little prologue? 
> 
> Yes? 
> 
> Yes.

**Freedom**.

  
It was something they wanted so badly. It had been taken from them. Trampled below the Surface, just as they had been forced to go down, deep, _deep_ into the earth. Time went on, and freedom was their goal; it was the hope that kept them going. The hope of seeing the sun, of breathing fresh air untainted by the minerals of caverns and the suffocating darkness. The dream of walking with the sky above and the world _below_ their feet. 

  
Freedom was the lullaby, and the battle cry.

  
But when freedom proved beyond their reach, and time passed...

One year.

Five.

Ten.

Thirty.

Ninety.

The lullaby was all but forgotten. The battle cry had grown hoarse and frail. Those who remembered, died, and the younger generation knew not what it was like to be truly free. The hope was still there, small and pulsing. They _would_ get out. They _had_ to. Freedom was everything, even if they couldn't remember it. Freedom was life, even if they had never lived it. And freedom was hope, even if they had so very little of it.

  
Freedom was their _dream_.

  
**Freedom**.

  
It was the term of what was right, even if it meant brother against brother. Freedom was again the battle cry, but this time strong and heated. With swords and banners the shout was given, and the clashing sides met, blood the horrible price that seemingly had no end in sight.

But for freedom, the very soul of their existence, and the existence of those who had no freedom, the cost was worth the fight. Each life lost was another step, another groping grasp for hope. Hope of a time when they could all be free. All be brothers once again. Was that too much to ask? Was that really what they were fighting so hard to gain? When is it enough, when the price for freedom grows too large to be paid? Ever? Maybe never.

Freedom was their _fight_.

.

.

.

.

* * *

 

And there the monsters stood, huddled beside one another with looks of horror on their varied faces. Their souls pulsed within them, almost as one, screaming for them to act, but them refusing to listen, overcome by the power of an immovable fear. It was as though they, and all time and space around them, had frozen solid, held bound by the terror that was steadily growing even stronger within them. It locked their knees and stiffened their spines. 

But no one more so than Sans.

He stood at the front of the group, like some sort of barrier between the demon and the friends at his back. His pink-slippered feet shifted uneasily in the blue carpet of their Surface home. His and Papyrus' small house, where they had all gathered that night for time together as friends. As family.

But now that was ruined.

His eye blazed with a threatening power that he couldn’t bring himself to even dare to use. Behind him, Papyrus whimpered, half out of fear, but mostly out of the frustrated hopelessness that he was feeling, brought on by the fact that there was nothing he could do to help the child standing before them. Every instinct within him told him to rush forward and wrap the child in his arms, begging them to stop and come back to them. It was obviously tearing the tall skeleton's soul apart, not being able to offer comfort or support in some way, but his one moment of weakness, in which he had stepped forward, had quickly been snuffed out with a single, alarmed and warning shout from his brother. Sans never yelled. But he had this night, in a wild, panicked way that had frozen Papyrus to his spot.

Toriel was still calling out to the human, trying to make some connection, her voice weak and soft with emotion, and Asgore gently restrained her from getting too close. Pain, deep and emotional, shined in both their eyes. If Papyrus' first instinct was to reach out, theirs was doubly so. But they could see something was wrong. They had come to know Frisk over the past year in which they had all lived on the Surface. Frisk was kind, and quiet. She was humble and sweet. Their Frisk would never smile cruelly, or threaten them, or laugh at their fear.

_This_ was not Frisk.

Undyne stood with all the continence of an oak, strong and firm, but she was mad; Sans could feel it coming off of her in waves at his back. She was angry because, despite all of their power combined, none of them could fix a thing, and it was maddening to her most of all. To attack the demon before them would be to attack Frisk she knew that. And in that knowledge her hands were tightly tied. Beside her, small and cringing, Alphys was simply a mess, and the sounds of her sniffling filled whatever silence was left between the whispered pleas and uneasy breaths. They had all learned about the resets, not only from Frisk, but also from Sans. And what was happening now was so off and so horribly apparent, that it was all they could do not to feel sick and faint with dread.  
  
Sans took a single step forward, careful and wary; his face holding nothing but tension. “let. her. go.”

What else could he say? What else could he do but speak; demand? He _knew_ Chara, better than anyone else, having fought her timeline after timeline after timeline. He recognized the child’s eyes, filled with malice and cruelty, instead of the kind, loving gaze of their beloved Frisk. He recognized that grin, emanating with morbid joy at their distress, so far a cry from Frisk’s gentle and patient smile. He hated to see this. Sans had seen it so many times before, but he had convinced himself that it would never be a sight he would be forced to behold again. Frisk, nearly a year before, had finally broken free of Chara’s possession. That girl had always been full of such amazing DETERMINATION. She had freed them; she had broken the Barrier and led them all out into the sunlight of a world many of them had given up on ever seeing. Frisk had brought hope, and joy, and friendship to all, but especially Sans, Papyrus, Toriel, Asgore, Undyne, and Alphys. She had made their lives worth living again, and the happy ending Sans had longed for had become a reality.

But, apparently, they had let their guard down too soon.

They had assumed that once the demonic soul had been defeated, her existence would have been ended. That her grip on them, and Frisk especially, would have been left as broken and void as the Barrier itself. They thought they had won.

But they were wrong.

In what was once the safety of a Surface home, the monsters stood pressed up against the wall in fear of what was happening, and Chara, knife in hand, stood before them, smiling. Grinning. Laughing. Only that morning Frisk had complained of not feeling well, and the monsters had believed she had caught a cold. They had tucked her in bed, having her stay home from school, with full faith that by the end of the day, she would be well again.

Sans wasn’t even sure how it had happened. How they hadn't heard the child’s small footsteps making their way down the staircase. There had been questions, of why she was up, but no answer came. There had been confusion, of where she had gotten that knife. And then there had been terror, as Sans realized that Frisk was no longer Frisk. And then their only answer had been Chara’s laugh and evil grin.

The child's expression widened at Sans’ attempt to hide his true fear. She tilted her head to the side, like a parakeet on a perch, enjoying the unmistakable anxiety in the skeleton’s gaze. He was afraid of her. Good. He should be. After all he had done to stand in her way. It was his fault that Frisk had managed to cast her out. It was his fault that she had been banished to the Void. But now she was back. And he was going to _pay_.   
_  
__“Oh, my dear Sansy,"_  she cooed soothingly. _"After all this time, not even a hello? Really, I would have thought better of you.”_

Sans grit his teeth, his hands clenching at his sides as the blue fire within him grew even brighter. His tone was filled with more anger than any of the others had ever heard before, and it frightened them.  
  
“where's frisk?! what have you _done_ with her?!”   
  
He mentally flinched when he couldn’t help his voice from cracking on the last question. His mind was in utter turmoil, all the fears of resets, of being thrown back into that torture, resurfacing. And he was barely able to conceal it. The others knew of Chara, for he and Frisk had told them, explained the timelines and the resets, but they didn’t _know_ her, not like _he_ did. He knew what she could do, what she _would_ do, and it was enough to bring back all the nightmares and terrors that he had barely just managed to get over.

_“Come now, Sans,”_ Chara hummed, studying the knife in her hand, observing its sharpness, how it glinted in the light streaming from the muted television to their right. _“You know you missed me. The fun we used to have together. Remember?”_ Her smile widened impossibly. _“Wouldn’t you like to do it all again? And again? AND AGAIN?”_

“no!” Sans’s shout startled the friends at his back, but he didn’t care. “i won’t let you! this ends here and now!”   
  
There was a burst of flame, and his hand raised suddenly, turning blue with a hum of immense power. The glow wrapped around the soul in Frisk’s chest, latching on and giving a jolt as Sans threw the human against the far wall. The child thumped against the plaster, leaving a slight dent with her shoulder. She seemed unfazed. In fact, she looked amused. The body that was Frisk's slumped, like a puppet cut from its strings, but the cruel smile and red eyes remained. The sight angered and frightened Sans more than ever, and he raised his hand to throw her again.

“SANS!”   
  
Papyrus lurched forward, trying to pull his brother back, as the others were also attempting to do. They didn’t understand. To them, that was still Frisk. A very strange and scary Frisk, but Frisk all the same. To them, that was their friend, their family, and their life; but to Sans it was the return of a very dangerous foe. One that had taken everything from him, over and over and over. That, even when they had reached the Surface, had haunted him night after night in an endless agony that he had thought would never end. And just when he though maybe, _maybe_ things were going to be alright, that there wouldn’t be any more resets, it had all come back to hurt them in a single, terrifying moment. The others just didn’t understand. Even as he struggled to send Chara into the adjoining wall, Sans could feel the others pulling on his arm, shaking him, and pleading to make him stop. And it was only their distress that made him pause, his magic weakening for just a moment before extinguishing. He couldn’t hurt Frisk. Even if it wasn’t really Frisk. For their sake, he couldn’t do it. Not again.

The living room filled with a dark chuckle as Chara lifted herself up off the floor. Her eyes shone with cruel amusement, pinning Sans with a hateful, and yet joyful glare, that grin still in place.   
_  
__“That struck a nerve, did I? That brought back a few memories of the good old days.”_  Another chuckle as she observed her victims, Sans breathing heavily with the fear and uncertainty clearly visible on the faces of the others. _“You thought I was gone, Sansy. And I was. Heehee, but you can never get rid of me for long. I want to play,_ _Sans."_ She cocked her head. _"Won’t you play with me?”_

Sans closed his non-existent eyes, feeling his soul drop. “no.”

_“Really? Because I’m going to change it up a bit. Wouldn't that be worth it? Wouldn't that be fun? We need something new. The old games are too...predictable.”_

“no.”   
  
He was in denial now. Outright refusing to admit he could do nothing. Just as he had always done, and felt so guilty to remember. All those times his friends had died, and he had stood by and watched. Not because he didn't care for them, but because it all came down to one point; it didn't matter. Everything would just reset anyway. It had still hurt, and it had haunted him and made him ill for quite some time. But what was the point in trying, when no matter how hard you tried it never made any difference? And so, back then, he had tried to convince himself that he didn't care. It had helped him keep his sanity, but now it wasn't working. Because now, no matter how hard he might deny it, even to himself, he _did_ care. He cared very much.

Chara laughed, reveling in the defeated expression on the short skeleton's face. _“Well, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You don’t really have a choice in the matter.”_

_  
_ Papyrus, who still had a firm hold of his brother's arm, stared at the child with a mix of fear and pitying compassion. He was trying his very best to grasp the seriousness of what was happening, and succeeding to a degree. Sans and Frisk had told him of Chara, and even now he was slowly seeing that this could be no one else but her. Frisk would never frighten them like this, and Sans would never hurt Frisk on purpose. Without a very good reason. 

  
"WHAT...W-WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?" 

  
He flinched as Chara's hate-filled eyes and grin latched onto him, seeming to bore into his very soul. It made him want to choke on his words and spit them out. 

  
Chara spoke, but she did not answer the taller skeleton's question. Her focus was still on Papyrus' face, but her words were to Sans. 

_  
__"He'll be the second to go. You remember? Just like always. He'll die. They all will."  
__  
_ Sans had started shaking now, and those who still gripped him gently looked down at him in worry. His eyes were shut tight, hands clenched and breathing fast, irregular. He was a wreck, and he knew it. Nothing he could possibly say would change anything. Chara was going to reset. She had the power. And he was completely helpless to stop it. Which only left him to resign himself to the thing he feared and dreaded more than anything else.  
  
"if you're going to do it, than do it," he hissed, barely above a whisper. His eye sockets opened again, and he stared right into the human's gaze, returning her hate with dark, pupil-less voids. "but it's just going to be the same. how many times can you do something, over and over, before you lose interest?" His question was more of frustration than of actual curiosity, but it only proved to make Chara all the more pleased.  
  
_"That's just it, Sansy. I'm_ _bored. The same old same old isn't going to cut it this time, so I'm going to mix things up a bit. Add a few curves in the road. Won't that be fun?"_    
  
"You can't do this!" Undyne yelled, stepping forward in front of Sans, almost protectively.

  
_"Oh, but I can. Time and space are nothing to me. I can reach far into the past, and far into the future. I can drag something from places you can only dream of..."_  She chuckled. _"Now there's a thought...This host was destructive; she turned your whole world upside down, and she's only a little girl. Imagine what I could do with an adult..."_

  
Sans didn't even care anymore. All he knew was that everything he had come to love within the last year was about to be taken away from him. A sort of tingling sensation, starting in his legs and swiftly climbing to the top of his skull alerted him. His head snapped back up from where he had been gazing at the floor. Even though he knew she would do it, he still hadn't been prepared. He frantically reached for Papyrus' hand, for any of their hands, as he heard the monsters at his back gasp in surprise as they too felt the odd sensation. They wouldn't know! They didn't remember! Sans wanted to say something, tell them how much they meant to him, but before he was even half turned to face them, everything was drowned out in a blinding white light...

Then darkness...

And nothingness.

Despite his deepest prayers and begging and pleading, Chara had done it. Chara had...

_RESET_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my friend Sgt-Major Reynolds for being my beta-reader and also for the use of his character Leiutenant Danford! THANKS!

_Many decades before..._

 

There were very few things more depressing than a rainy day. Even if the country were not at war it would have been dreary. Even if the Union army camp was not up to their ankles in sludge, it would still have been dreary. The water was pool deep in the trenches and wagon tracks, filling every hoof-print and turning the brown, sandy earth to mud. It got on everything, from uniforms and tents, to your very skin, clinging stubbornly until a day arrived when the sun would come out and dry you off. Then the mud would cake, and could just be dusted off like flour. But a sunny day was long in coming this time, and the company of the 22nd U.S. Cavalry was left sloshing along through the muck and mire, noses sniffling and heads filled with a sort of haze that only comes with the unpleasantness of the common cold.

It had been raining for the last three days, and it was a wonder the Officer's Quarters had not yet sunk into the very earth. Everything held a very mushy, saturated appearance, from the fabric of the many pitched tents to the clothing of the soldiers themselves. It was miserable, and the misery was shared by one and all. Being autumn, the air was chilled to begin with, but with the added moisture it was almost frigid. The only consolation for the poor soldiers was that the Confederates, somewhere out there beyond the fog and sheets of cold, autumn rain, were just as miserable and damp as they were. That spitefulness made it all a little more bearable.

This was the only thing keeping Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield going at this point; the thought that, somewhere out there, the enemy was just as unhappy, sore, and sick as he was somehow made his own misery worth it. The tall, red-haired, steadfastly-built man had fought hard that day, despite the rain, and was covered from nearly head to toe in mire, one leg bleeding slightly from a bullet that had grazed his calf sometime during their last charge. It made for a blatant contrast, his water-darkened blue pants highlighted by a slow, dripping streak of vibrant red. It stung too, with every step he took, but Chesterfield ignored it. It was a sensation he was well familiar with and knew how to handle without giving it too much thought. There were those in the Infirmary that had suffered far worse, so who was he to complain? Compared to other injuries he had had in the past, it was little more than a scratch that plagued him now.

The battle, though routine by this point, had been made a lot harder because of the weather, causing horses to slip and fall, and men to lose their balance, and either one of the two was more than enough to be fatal in war. Not to mention that the cold added a stiffness to their fingers, as the soldiers tried to grip and fire their bayonets at the enemy, and a rigidness to their movements as they tried to make themselves as little of a target as possible. Thankfully, the struggle this day had been short, a sort of mutual agreement hitting both sides at once that fighting could be held off for a better time. It was just too bad that they couldn't have come to that conclusion a little sooner, before men had lost their lives to lie face down in muck. But such was war. Such was their lives for the last three years...

Chesterfield's mood, like everything else around him, was dark and sliding. Woe to the man who stood in his way. Soldiers saw him coming as he marched through camp, recognizing the Union sergeant's expression, and quickly parted aside. While Chesterfield was a nice enough sort on any normal given day, his temper was renowned on both sides of the war as dangerously unpredictable. It wasn't unusual, when his temper flared, for a bystander or instigator to walk away from him with either a black eye, a bloody nose, or both. He had even once struck an officer, a fact that he was most certainly not proud of and wished to forget. He had been lucky not to have been shot on the spot, or thrown in jail at the very least, and for that he was grateful. He seemed to have an incredible record for good luck, as well as bad, in there was some way that such a thing could be true. It is easiest explained in that he always seemed to have the worst luck with getting into bad situations, but the best luck in always walking out of them alive and unharmed. At least to some degree. It was completely up for interpretation.

But, at the moment, the sergeant's temper was once again being tested to its limit. His eyes angrily searched the rows of saturated tents, calling out snappishly to several people, asking if they had seen Corporal Blutch. No one had, at least on this side of the camp, and that only increased the sergeant's temper.

Blutch was under Chesterfield's command, but that didn't mean the man was any less hard to control. Born into a life where he had to fend for himself, Blutch had come over the years to treat authority with a certain amount of contempt, often border-lining insubordination. While Chesterfield found that to be extremely annoying, he never brought the man to court martial for it. It was a silent understanding between the two of them that Blutch did half the annoying things he did strictly for the purpose of getting on his sergeant's nerves. The most prominent of which was Blutch's constant threat of deserting the army when Chesterfield least expected it. He had even tried it once or twice, with Chesterfield hot of his heels to drag him back. Neither man had wanted to join the army. When the war broke out, they had both been happily going about their lives, Blutch as a small town bartender, and Chesterfield on the verge of marrying the daughter of a butcher. But, in a moment of celebratory indulgence, courtesy of Blutch, the two men had been talked into sighing something at the insistence of some nearby soldiers. When they had come back to themselves, they had found themselves to by enlisted in the Union army. Blutch had been horrified, having always held a dislike for death and killing. Chesterfield, though shocked, had fallen into his new role as a soldier with a growing flare of patriotism, quickly making his way up the ranks until he was a sergeant, with Blutch as his underling. It gave him the opportunity to make sure Blutch wasn't planning to leave, but also to look out for the smaller man, who he felt an odd sense of responsibility for. Maybe because it was partially his fault the man was in the army to begin with. That guilt, however, was constantly buried in annoyance on Chesterfield's part, especially when Blutch didn't participate in the battles. The man had come up with countless tactics that always managed to get him out of the fights, disappearing sometime early in the charge.

Such had been the case today. And so, like so many times before, the sergeant was on the lookout for his frustrating companion, an entire speech practiced angrily in his head for his cowardly friend.

Chesterfield continued on through the camp, his anger growing with each slippery step he took. It was agonizingly slow, and if he tried to hurry, the sudden shifting of feet sliding on mud kept startling him, knocking him out of his wrathful thoughts, only for him to build them back up again. This was only enforced by the pain in his leg. Maybe he had better have it checked over in the Infirmary after all? No. Not yet. He pushed the thought aside. He needed to find Blutch first, if not to berate the man than to at least make sure he was alright.

When he found Blutch he was going to...going to...He didn't know what he'd do. He had already checked the Infirmary, which was always the first place he looked when his friend was missing. He knew Blutch would have done the same. When you lived in a world where it was kill or be killed, and someone you knew disappeared, it wasn't too far fetched to find them under the care of the surgeons. Or worse. But Blutch had not been there today, thank goodness. And that filled Chesterfield with a mix of both relief, and further anger. If Blutch had been injured, the sergeant might have forgiven his absence, but since that was not the case, the corporal was in for a stern lesson.

The man in question, completely aware of the wrath about to fall down upon him, sat upon a battered old crate, gathered about a makeshift table playing cards with a few other soldiers. Most of the deck was missing, and what few cards they did have were torn and faded, but it was better than nothing. Because of the rain, the group had no choice but to play beneath the cover of one of the tents on the far side of camp, which was making it rather crowded. Not that they minded. As soldiers, they were familiar with close quarters, and squeezing into the small space was really no trouble.

The corporal's hand was good, luck with him as it usually was. Blutch prided himself in his con-man-like abilities. He held the cards in his hands, which were stiff with cold, eyeing the men around him and making sure that he looked as dejected as possible in the eyes of the other players. If they thought he was losing, he'd have a better chance of winning. That was usually Blutch's way. If there was a shortcut, he'd take it; if there was a cheat, he knew it; and if he knew he could gain anything by putting on an act, he didn't hesitate to give it his theatrical best.

"BLUTCH!"

_Shoot. Not Now..._

The corporal's head lazily looked up, peering through the rain outside the tent with a sigh. He knew what was coming; he had been expecting it ever since their troop had gotten back from battle, a good two hours before. Dropping the cards onto the wood-plank table with an audible groan, Blutch gave his companions a tired grin and a shrug.

"I fold, fellas."

Easy come, easy go. He could always play again.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when the sergeant himself came bursting in through the tent flaps, his eyes fixing on the corporal heatedly, like a beast zeroing in on its prey. The other men in the tent quickly gathered their card game and wagers, pulling them back further into the tent and away from the two men who were now facing each other off like old foes. It was a known fact that, though certainly friends, Chesterfield and Blutch's actions toward one another were often rather violent, specifically during the time after a battle. They were like two angry cats circling each other in an alley, one angry and fierce and the other smirking and passively defensive. And no one wanted to get caught between them.

"You!" Chesterfield pointed accusingly, coming in out of the rain. His clothing was darkened by rainwater, his cap having actually caught enough to pool and spill over as he came to a halt just inside the tent. "You didn't participate in the charge! Again! Blutch, this is getting ridiculous!"

The corporal rolled his eyes, his fists coming to rest incredulously on his sides. "Is that all? Sarge, you know me. This really can't be that much of a surprise anymore. I've explained about Arabesque before."

Arabesque was the corporal's horse, a grey old mare that thankfully still had enough strength and willpower to survive during a war. But Blutch, to Chesterfield's irritation, had somehow managed to train the creature to fall down flat and play dead at the first bugle sound of battle. It had scared Chesterfield to death that first time, with Blutch tumbling off then lying still as though dead along side his fallen horse. But the sergeant had later returned to camp to find Blutch perfectly well and unharmed. He explained that his horse got ''heart murmurs'', but Chesterfield quickly learned the truth. Arabesque was Blutch's best tactic when it came to missing a fight. Blutch had always declared that his horse suffered ill-health, and that the excitement was too much for her. No one believed him of course, and Blutch knew that. He didn't need them to believe it, he just needed the excuse to exist. Because no one could prove him wrong.

The war had been going on for almost three years now, North verses South, with little to no sign of letting up. Blutch had fought when he had no other choice, something that he made sure was a situation he rarely got caught in. He was perfectly fine with being called a coward, for avoiding nearly every charge their superior Captain Stark or anyone else led. But Chesterfield was the only problem. The man was loyal to a fault. He wanted, and constantly lectured, Blutch to show a bit of backbone. He spoke of scars, and how they'd be able to tell stories to their children's children about their heroic deeds. How they'd be heroes. It was all a very dramatic way of looking at something that was, in Blutch's opinion, already far too dramatic without the embellishments. What was the point of having stories to tell if you were dead, not having any children's children to relate them to anyway? It really made little sense to Blutch, and, normally, he would have said so. But today, Chesterfield didn't give him the chance.

"No! No, excuses! I don't want to hear them! I have heard enough about Arabesque's 'heart murmurs' to last me a lifetime!"

A few of the men in the back of the tent stifled a chuckle, and Chesterfield sent them a glare. He turned back angrily to Blutch, who was smiling smugly, and the sergeant was about to let his temper rage, when a young soldier stuck his head into the tent, searching eyes falling on the pair.

"Sergeant Chesterfield, Sir? General Alexander wishes to see you and Corporal Blutch in his quarters, Sir."

Chesterfield tried not to let his anger refocus on the hapless messenger. He had to reign it in, taking a moment to breath before he answered. "Now?"

"Yes, Sir."

"...Alright." The sergeant sighed, realigning the fabric of his uniform in a way that wasn't so tight from rainwater. "We'll be right there." The young soldier left and Chesterfield sent Blutch a warning frown. "Best behavior. I don't feel up to dealing with all of this today, Blutch, alright?" He didn't wait for an answer, but instead stalked out of the tent back into the rain, Blutch following grudgingly.

This was so typical. So it was raining. So they were being called to the Officer's Quarters. Nothing ever changed. Life had become little more than a never ending drone. Chesterfield had come to see the occasional battle his only respite from the mundane. The only time when he truly felt alive. He was slowly starting to understand how Blutch might feel, that sense of it all being so senseless, but the sergeant knew better. Whenever such thoughts tried to invade his mind, he pushed it back with the same optimism he had always held. Why were they fighting? For freedom. For his mother and father, back home. For the life he loved. For the slaves all across the country. That's what mattered. It was just getting harder and harder to remember that, when every day was the same. Kill or be killed.

The corporal couldn't help but notice his sergeant's slightly paler complexion. Of course, when the weather was like it was, that wasn't unusual. But this was different. The sergeant looked flushed, and his voice sounded slower, rougher. He probably had a cold, which wasn't serious by any means, as long as it didn't get worse. Chesterfield always seemed far more susceptible to illness. Blutch, however, prided himself on hardly ever getting sick. That did not influence the corporal's attitude toward his superior, however. He was annoyed, just as Chesterfield was annoyed, with each other's company. He could only hope the meeting with the general would be short. Then he could get back to his card game.

The Officer's Quarters was a subject of mixed feelings in the army camp. For most, it signified a residential marker for the leadership of the men, where those in charge were easily found and easily heard from. It was a structure of strength, both physically and metaphorically, among the rows of fragile tents. Resembling a small cabin, the warm glow of its lamps often gave a sense of security to the men, believing that someone was awake until the small hours of the morning, trying to figure out how to win the accursed war.

But for Blutch, the Officer's Quarters held a different meaning. It was a place where men more fortunate than himself lived in luxury, while those under them lived in filth and unrest. It was a place filled with a warm and comfort he had long since forgotten, and the corporal resented the officers for it. The contempt on his face was always hard to hide. What kind of human beings sent men out to die, while they sipped tea and talked of strategies and battles from the safety of four, sturdy walls? Heartless, unfeeling human beings, in Blutch's opinion.

Coming out of the rain, Chesterfield and Blutch ascended the stairs to the cabin, taking off their caps and shaking the rainwater off the best they could. A young man, not much older than Chesterfield himself, exited the doorway they were about to enter, and both soldiers gave a hasty salute. The man was thin, in his mid twenties, and of similar stock as many other men in their army. In other words, a perfectly ordinary looking man. But this man, Lieutenant Danford by name, was different in that he seemed to get close to the men, even those under his rank. Rather than passing soldiers by, he tended to care and invest himself in their well-being. He was the type of man who nearly always wore a gentle smile, spreading a kindly warmth wherever he went.

"Evening," Danford greeted courteously, returning the salute. He noticed their rather haggard appearance, especially that of the sergeant. His gaze, keen to detail, noticed the slow trickle of blood running down Chesterfield's pant leg. "Good heavens, sergeant...Your leg is bleeding."

Chesterfield glanced down, as though he had forgotten all about it. And maybe he had. "Oh. Yes, well..." He nodded his head toward the door. "Have to see the general first. Then I'll get checked out, Sir."

Danford nodded slowly, as though not completely convinced. "See that you do." His eyes brightened once more, despite the dim atmosphere of the outdoors. "Try and take it easy, boys." And with that, he headed down the steps and out to, assuredly, his tent. His short exchange with them had somehow left them feeling a little lighter, and they turned and entered the building, irritated thought momentarily forgotten. The warmth was immediately surrounding them, and both men gave an audible sigh of relief. They had not realized how chilled they had been, until this dry, comfortable world was shown to them. It was bittersweet; enjoying the sensation, but knowing that, before they knew it, they would have to leave and face the cold and wet world outside once more.

Chesterfield paused, taking a breath before he knocked upon the closed door of the inner room. It was answered by a clipped response.

"Come in."

Bracing himself with stiff attention, the sergeant pushed the door open and entered, Blutch following like a shadow. The door was shut, and the two soldiers moved forward, standing side by side at attention, waiting to be acknowledged.

"I'll be right with you, boys," the general spoke distractedly. The white haired, older man was filing a number of papers into his desk drawer, and having a hard time of it. The thing was already so filled with reports and other official papers it was almost bursting. Chesterfield almost considered offering his assistance, but decided against it. He didn't want to appear condescending.

The office room, part of the three room cabin, was well lit, lanterns hanging from fixtures in the ceiling. A fireplace took care of the rest, completely banishing the chill in the air that was so prevalent outside its reach. The smell of lunch was still drifting in the atmosphere, even though it was definitely from earlier, the scent weak and faded. General Alexander was the room's only occupant, and Chesterfield could only assume the other officers were behind the closed door in the background. The general seemed slightly frazzled, which was understandable. The battle had not gone well that morning. A lot of men and supplies had been lost. It was an unspoken truth that they were really in a bad way. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Finally, after wrestling the drawer another moment or so, General Alexander seated himself down in his desk chair with a sigh, folding his hands on the surface before him. He looked over the two men standing before him with a mix of trust and trepidation. Trust, because he knew these soldiers always came through, doing their duty efficiently, even in the face of certain danger. Trepidation, because of the usual chaotic disasters that often fell in their wake. Sometimes he tried to determine whether it was worth it; if the trouble their actions caused was worth the completed outcome. He supposed it was. They always completed their missions, if not in a rather unorthodox manner.

Sergeant Chesterfield was a bright, young lad. Loyal as could be, and certainly officer material. The General had no doubt the young man would climb the ranks quite steadily, if the war continued on as it was. But, right now, he was far more needed as a sergeant. His bravery often attested to his quick action. He wasn’t afraid of many things, and if he was, he pushed onward anyway.

Corporal Blutch was another matter entirely. Alexander often wondered how the diminutive, young man had even survived this long. He was insubordinate, to Chesterfield especially, cowardly, lazy in some respects, and bad tempered in others. And yet, the general could not think of anyone else he would rather send with Chesterfield on any given mission. Together, the two men formed a team that was both effective, and creative. Where Chesterfield was quick in action, Blutch was quick in wit. Where Chesterfield’s cunning lacked, Blutch used his; and where Blutch’s strength struggled, Chesterfield took the front. And yet, the two men would glare at each other with such intense hatred at times, people often wondered as to whether they were friends, or enemies. The general wasn't sure if even the two men in question knew for sure.

But, in the long run, General Alexander could find no reason not to make use of their skills and talents, even if it was a bit trying at times to handle them. And that was why, after the day's recent battle, the commanding officer had decided to call the two men forward to his presence. Rain pattered down on the roof above them, cascading down the window panes, distorting the view through them. The General had made sure to set up his table and battle strategies away from the few leaks that the structure was cursed with, but even then his maps were speckled with moisture. He'd have to figure out why later, and detail someone to fix the drips.

Chesterfield stood at stiff attention, his uniform still covered in mud. He had not even had a chance to change after their last skirmish with the Confederate army, and a tear in the knee of his pants showed a bit of red. He must have gotten the edge of a saber or bayonet thrust at him during the battle. It was nothing serious, but the General couldn’t help wincing, knowing that, with all the water and mud running down into it, it had to sting.

Blutch, on the other hand, though wet from the walk from his tent to the Officer's Quarters was relatively clean, other than the mud on his boots and the lower part of his pants, where his trek through the mire had splashed up against him. His uniform was without scratch or tear, and even without asking Alexander knew that the corporal had not participated in the charge. His manner, though standing at regulation attention, was far more relaxed and careless then Chesterfield. It made the general a little frustrated, and he could read the same emotion in the sergeant’s expression, but there was really no reason to bring it up. There was no need to go over something that was already expected and understood.

Why he put up with the corporal’s nonmilitary behavior was beyond most people’s understanding. It was as simple as the fact that, in the long run, Blutch was needed for the more sensitive missions. He had proven, through the last three years, to be an excellent partner to Chesterfield, and had an unnatural streak of luck when it came to coming out on top. Even the sergeant found himself frequently losing to the corporal’s artful skills of deception and teasing. But, when times were rough, the corporal often showed signs of hidden attributes that were far more valuable alive than dead. And that was the only reason the corporal had not yet been court marshaled.

“What are your orders, Sir?” Chesterfield clipped, standing at full attention with his back so straight it was likely to snap. The sergeant sent Blutch a sideways scowl when the corporal’s salute showed far less energy. 

With a roll of his eyes, Blutch straightened a little more.

General Alexander stood from his wooden seat, stretching his legs as inconspicuously as he could as he took a few steps forward. “I have a small run for the two of you. It isn’t the safest of things, but it needs to be done.”

“We can do it, Sir.”

Blutch just muttered something under his breath, which both the sergeant and the general ignored.

“Good.” Alexander shifted back to the table, beckoning the two men forward to gaze down at the map he had prepared. “This diagram shows our current location. As you might have guessed, the battle against the Rebels this morning was not as significant as we might have hoped for.” There had been so many deaths. “We’re low on artillery, and we’re pretty low on men as well. I need you boys to get over to General Abercrombie’s position, tell him our situation, and see how much he can help us out. Because, if something isn’t done soon, we’re going to be in a heap of trouble.”

Chesterfield studied the map with interest, memorizing it to the best of his ability. He had always had a knack for maps and diagrams, being able to remember even the ones his father had drawn out for him when he was just a boy, as his father told tales of his own exploits and adventures. Those stories had always intrigued Chesterfield, filled his head with images of bravery, and courage, and excitement. Those stories probably held a great deal of blame for the eagerness he held to fight for the freedom of the war. Of course, back in those days, when he was only eight, his father had left out one very important factor.

War is not a game.

Chesterfield could still remember his first battle. He had been so excited, ready to give the effort his all; ready to prove his strength, and cunning, and bravery. But when the call was sounded, and he rushed forward, the man beside him had been cut down by a well-aimed bullet. Chesterfield could still remember his shock. Could still remember the crushing realization that this was not going to be all fun and games. That this was a place where you weren’t good because you wanted to show off. You were good, because if you weren’t, you died. And even if you were good, you could still die.

He had taken the war seriously then, more seriously than he had ever taken anything. His childish notions faded, but his courage and determination only grew stronger. Not because he wanted to prove himself to others, but because he wanted to prove anything and everything to himself. To convince that little voice in the back of his head that whispered that he wasn’t going to make it, that he could make it, and would make it. And that he would make sure Blutch made it too.

Blutch stared at the map incredulously, seeing everything wrong with the plan immediately. They were positioned on the inner rim of a large field, where they were camped and had been camped for the past day and a half. Around them on three sides were thick forest, and on the forth side another field. It was there that the battle had taken place. Beyond that, shown by a series of pebbles, the Confederate had set up their own camp in a similar fashion. Both sides were recuperating at the moment, but even then they were far closer than the corporal liked.

“You’ll have to take the back way, through the forest. Abercrombie’s men are off somewhere to the East, though I haven’t heard from him in nearly three days. His position very well may have changed since then.”

The corporal made a face at the general’s words. “You mean you’re sending us out there, and you don’t even know if there’s anyone there to find?” He sounded distinctly annoyed, though it was still just below the line of insubordination. That would be sure to break through later, when he was alone with Chesterfield and could let his real thoughts loose without danger of getting in trouble.

“We really don’t have much of a choice,” Alexander sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was starting to get a headache, probably from his current company. “I want you two to set out as soon as you are able." He paused, his eyes falling back to Chesterfield. "Sergeant, before you go, have someone from the Infirmary check over that leg. And that is an order.”

“Yes, Sir.”

"Dismissed."

"Yes, Sir."

* * *

The infirmary was crowded with injured soldiers, the metallic smell of blood so thick in the air Chesterfield had to breathe carefully to ensure he didn’t become sick. He felt guilty, walking in on his own two legs to be checked out for a simple scratch, when so many here didn’t even have both legs to stand on anymore. He winced at those, lying in hay and rags with missing limbs, carefully wrapped and waiting to see if the amputation had saved them, or sealed their fate. Moaning was common; coughing, even sobbing. The atmosphere was grim and somber, though the sergeant knew that, had he come in earlier, the place would have been hot, stifling, and chaotic as the infirmary workers struggled to save the lives of so many injured.

He had been here himself more than once. Sometimes he only suffered minor injuries, other times for more serious, but never fatal. And he was grateful for that. He remembered one particular time where he had spent several days unconscious in this dreadful place, even though the infirmary’s location changed as their unit made its way across country. But that was hardly worth noting. An infirmary, wherever it may be, is always an infirmary; a place reeking with fear and death. Chesterfield could feel the emotions twisting a heavy knot in his chest, and he tried his best not to let it show.

He found the surgeons resting uneasily on one end of the old barn that was currently serving as their hospital. They looked exhausted, too tired to have even removed their blood-stained aprons from around their waists. Their eyes held that sad, haunted look, and Chesterfield felt like he was intruding when he approached them.

“Um…Excuse me?”

The lead surgeon blinked, coming out of his dark, tortured thoughts, before he gave the sergeant a very weak smile. “Yes, Sergeant. What can I do for you?”

Chesterfield felt his cheeks warm in embarrassment. He almost considered saying it was nothing and leaving, convinced that such a minor injury as his was simply too small to matter. It hurt, true; in fact it was really starting to sting, but that was a blessing compared to so many unfortunates around him. But he had been given an order, by two officers, and Chesterfield was too loyal and obedient for his own good.

“I'm about to be sent out, but the General insisted I be treated for my leg before I go.” He blanched slightly as the surgeon cast his eyes down to his tattered pant leg. “But I don’t think it’s all that bad. Barely even noticed it.” Somehow, that just came out sounding like a lie, even though it was partially bound in truth.

The surgeon pushed himself away from the wall, eyes still fixed on the sergeant’s leg. “Well, whether it hurts or not, the General’s right. Let me take a look.”

It didn’t take long to assess that the injury, though a little worse than Chesterfield had thought, was really not a problem at all. After it was wrapped securely the sergeant hardly even noticed it, and thanked the doctor and left. He was grateful to breathe the fresh air outside of the infirmary once again, glad to leave the death and fear behind.

 He located Blutch easy enough, as the corporal had grudgingly done as he was told and had outfitted both their horses for the trip. He shrugged apologetically when Chesterfield eyed the horse the corporal had brought him, giving it a questioning glance.

“Had to have your horse switched out for this one. Yours was still too worn from the battle,” Blutch informed. And Chesterfield had to hold back a stinging comment about the reason Blutch’s horse, Arabesque, was still in fine condition.

The corporal had proven himself to be quite good with most animals, his horse especially. He had trained the beast to come and obey certain whistles and commands, not to mention those faked ‘fainting spells'. That, matched with Blutch’s flare for the dramatic, had often left Chesterfield believing the corporal had been shot down, back in their early days in the army. Now, as the sergeant knew full well the cause, the trick having been far too overused, it only proceeded to fuel the sergeant’s frustration toward his friend’s cowardice.

But now was not the time.

Chesterfield looked over the beastly pair, satisfied that Blutch had not neglected to gather the supplies they would need. Canteens of water, some food, and a couple of blankets, in case they had trouble locating their fellow soldiers and had to make camp. Not too much was needed, being a fairly short journey; at least, they hoped that was the case. General Abercrombie’s regiment could be anywhere from the next available field to a mile or two away. And, in the rain, even the former didn't sound encouraging. The two men mounted their horses, riding out the beasts' initial reluctance as the creatures whinnied, protesting their being forced out in such unpleasant weather.

"Alright," the sergeant growled, holding back a cough. His lungs felt thick with the chest cold he was developing. Blasted weather was starting to get to him. But he'd deal with that when they got back. "Let's get this done as quick and efficient as possible." He urged his horse forward, heading into the surrounding forest. Blutch gave the woodland a hesitant glance, and then followed.

Both left their camp behind.

* * *

Chesterfield cursed.

So much for getting the job done quickly.

He hadn't anticipated running into any trouble; something that did, in fact, appear in the form of three Confederate soldiers. It had all been by accident, on the side of both parties, but the Rebels had been armed, and the sergeant and Blutch had been hard pressed to escape unharmed. Chesterfield actually had a few bullets embedded in his saddlebag, where a few close calls had very nearly met their mark.

Then, to make matters worse, the rain had started coming down in torrents, making it almost impossible to see beyond three or four yards at a time. The tree trunks around them faded just above head level, foliage lost in the dense fog that had shrouded the forest like a white blanket of chilling moisture.

Figures.

Of course this couldn't have been a simple, easy assignment, like it was supposed to have been. But that was the story of their lives. Nothing was ever simple; nothing was ever easy, not by a long shot. Now they were soaked even more than they had been, they were lost with nothing to guide them in any helpful direction, and to top it all off, Chesterfield was feeling sicker by the minute.

The sergeant moaned quietly, not daring to make a sound any louder than that for fear of any enemy troops being within earshot. Wiping his sleeve under his nose, Chesterfield sniffed, suppressing the urge to cough away the tickle in his throat. His head felt almost as fogged as the world around him, but he hid his discomfort by replacing it with an emotion he was far more familiar with; anger.

Blutch stayed wisely silent as they traveled, at least at first. He could read his sergeant's fowl mood, and had not wished to call upon the larger man's wrath. But now, he was becoming chilled, the shivering wracking him so hard his teeth were chattering. Without even thinking it through, the corporal began to complain and curse the mission, calling it everything from ludicrous to suicide. It was a way to use up his nervous energy. The sergeant, on the other hand, did not approve.

"Will you  _shut up!_ " Chesterfield hissed, wincing as he suddenly realized he had a terrible headache. He placed a hand to his forehead, but gave another growl, covering it up. "You want someone to  _hear_?"

"Anything would be better than wandering around and dying of exposure!" the corporal sneered back, sending a glance of pure defiance in his sergeant's direction. But his expression jolted to startlement as a sudden crack of thunder, simultaneously linked with a flash of lightening, crashed above them. Arabesque startled, rearing back on her hind legs a moment before her rider managed to gain control again. The corporal glanced up at the sky, eyes wider then he had been before, and all the attitude drained from his tone. "That was...close."

"We have to keep going," Chesterfield answered stubbornly. "We can't just stay here."

Blutch couldn't help but agree. He had never been all that fond of thunderstorms, and he wished more than anything to be back in the relative safety of the camp.

The two men urged their steeds forward, through the driving rain and fog, both leaving their differences behind for the moment. They went on like this, for what must have been a solid hour, and still there was no sign of anyone or anything. Nothing but half shrouded trees and haze-filled depths. Chesterfield could no longer hide his discomfort, slouching forward slightly in the saddle, though he was still firm and determined to lead the way. Blutch followed as always, miserable and wet, his shivering having become almost the level of convulsions.

It wasn't long before the mud got so thick and slick that the horses could no longer keep their balance with the added weight of their riders. The two men were forced to dismount, guiding the beasts forward by their reigns. The mud was deep, making it hard to walk without feeling like the murk might swallow their boots. It slowed their progress even more, and only increased their misery, which Blutch once again found no hindrance in expressing.

"How do I get into these messes?" the corporal growled, pausing a moment to dislodge his foot from the sink hole-like pit he had stumbled into.

Chesterfield answered with equal temper. "You volunteered."

"I never volunteered!" Blutch yelled indignantly, not even caring if his voice carried. The only ones crazy enough to be out in this weather was them. "I wasn't even given a choice to go out on this! We could have said something!  _You_  could have told the general it was too risky! But no, you always have to be the Brave Sergeant Chesterfield, even if that means you dying and taking me down with you! You beat everything, Sarge, you know that?!"

The sergeant, fevered with temper and illness, turned with a snarl, releasing his horse's reign so that he could clench both his fists at his sides. The overall stress of the situation, which normally wouldn't have bothered him, was strangely overwhelming now.

"If you actually pulled your weight in this war, maybe we would have won already!" he yelled back, his voice muffled even in his own head. "If you actually cared, and made some effort, we might all be back with our families by now!"

Blutch blinked, but that was his only emotional response before his anger returned. "You know that isn't true! This living nightmare would still be real even if I charged into every battle, like some idiots I know! I wouldn't make a difference!"

"You're a coward!" Chesterfield labeled angrily.

Blutch clenched his teeth. "And you're a fool!"

"Slacker!"

"Maniac!"

"Shorty!"

"Lunatic!"

Both men pulled back their fists, fully prepared to get out their frustrations properly, when suddenly there was a sound like the ripping of the heavens, and a wave of dizziness overcame them so violently that they stumbled to their knees. It left them feeling stunned, uncertain of what had happened, and too startled to comprehend anything else. Chesterfield's breath caught in his throat, all anger forgotten as he gripped his aching head with muddied hands. This was no simple headache, this was a feeling unlike any he had ever experienced. It felt like his skull was going to crack in two. Blutch felt very much the same way, breathing raggedly as he struggled to keep from passing out.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so very VERY long guys. I've been busy with a lot of other projects, and this keeps falling by the wayside. BUT! Here is some more, and I hope to keep them coming, no matter how long a pause in between. THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE!

 

The feeling subsided like the ebbing of a tide, only to return just as strongly, like a wave crashing against the shores of their consciousness. It ripped through their bodies like fire in their veins. Both soldiers cried out in pain, curling into themselves as their vision became too unfocused to distinguish anything around them. The horses were whinnying, rearing up in unease, as though they could sense their masters' distress and were uncertain as to what they should do.

Blutch tried to stand, tried to move at all, and was frightened to find that he couldn't. His body refused to move, as though the very air, the very world around him rejected it and held it frozen in the position he had fallen to. What was going on?! What was happening?! They had been fine a moment before. How could it be that they were both suffering the same pain at the same moment? With no apparent cause? It didn't make any sense! Of course, when agony has taken hold, it's hard to think anything through properly.

A third wave hit.

The world suddenly felt as though it had been tipped on its side. Blutch doubled over further under a terrible, dizzying pressure that seemed to push and pull him in all directions. He was vaguely aware of Chesterfield crying out beside him, before everything changed. The rain filled sky of grey, the sopping wet mud beneath their hands and knees, everything just all at once winked out of existence. Fresh air was replaced by a stifling black, a heated, smothering, substance-less black that pressed against them, making it hard to breath.

"S-S _arge?!_ "

How Blutch even managed that was beyond his comprehension. He felt so tight, as though he were wedged between two immovable forces, and his sense of claustrophobia surfaced with a vengeance, but there was little he could do against it. He could feel himself fading, preparing for unconsciousness, when again everything changed, color burst back into substance, and a moment later Blutch was kneeling on his hands and knees in the sunlight, gasping for breath as he tried to drag his mind out of sluggish shock. Beside him, Chesterfield was suffering much the same consequence, shivering and gasping for breath. The pain was gone, but a dull throb remained afterward as a reminder of its existence.

But they were alive. 

After a moment or two of coughing, and trying to resist the urge to be sick, both men gingerly acknowledged each other's presence, eyes wide and still panting against their frazzled nerves and tingling skin. Sweat coated both, and wracking shivers tried to convulse up and down their spines. It felt as though they had been hit by lightning, and somehow survived. In fact, if not for the fact that their clothes and bodies were still intact, they might have assumed that to be the case. Lightening strikes were rare, but definitely fatal in almost all cases. Only a very few in history had been fortunate to have survived such a shock.

"...W..What h-happened?" 

Chesterfield's voice broke on the second word, coming out as a hoarse whisper. His arms were shaking under him as he tried to push himself up a bit more. Beneath his fingers coarse grass prickled, a far contrast from the oozing mud of a few moments before. His attempts to ground himself were weak, but desperate. Despite their new location being dry and warm, his clothes and body were still wet from the rain and covered in mud. A gentle wind blew into him, and he shivered even more.

Blutch was in the process of slowly, shakily standing to his feet, a task he was quickly realizing he wasn't quite ready for yet. With a wheezy gasp he allowed himself to sit back in the grass, wrapping his arms around himself as he too was assaulted by the chilling wind against his damp uniform.

"I-I don't k-know." He glanced around, alarm and concern on his face. "What...Where's Arabesque?!"

The realization that his beloved horse was no longer in sight prompted the corporal to try rising once again, this time succeeding, though in a very wobbly fashion. He staggered a moment, and Chesterfield held out a hand to steady him as he tripped by, though it was also in an attempt to stop him. While Blutch could be a particularly lazy fellow when it came to the war, there were times where he did push himself a little too much. And he could shift between the two at alarming speeds, so fast that Chesterfield often didn't know whether to encourage him or force him to stand still.

"B-Blutch! Where are...are you going?! We don't know where we are...It could b-be dangerous!" Blast this stuttering. It wasn't making him sound the least bit forceful, like he wanted. "C-Come back here!"

The corporal, as the sergeant expected, didn't listen, and staggered several steps out of his superior's reach, eyes dizzily roaming their surroundings for his horse. With a curse, Chesterfield dragged himself into an equally unsteady standing position. His head swam for a moment, and he really did think he was going to be sick, when it passed and left him free to stand up straight. He groaned as every inch of him ached, almost convincing him to lie down and stay still, but he wouldn't have that. Not when Blutch had forced himself up and moving. Chesterfield was not about to be outdone.

The grass underfoot was sparse, stickily even under his boots. Birds sang in the distance, and the wind ruffled against the foliage, making a calm, swishing through the leaves and what appeared to be wheat like vegetation. It was so much more relaxing then the torture they had endured for the last hour, and especially that last bit. Chesterfield felt his nerves and nausea slowly dissipating as he took deep breaths, trying to aid his recovery. When he finally felt able, he looked up and realized Blutch had moved out of his range of sight.

"Blutch!"

"Over here, Sarge..." the corporal called weakly, head still seemingly filled with cotton. He felt as though everything he said and did was in slow motion, but that was passing, and he knew he'd be fine. "I think you should see this."

 The corporal had managed to stumble up a slight path in what Chesterfield now realized was a rocky, overgrown mountainside. Funny, but he didn't remember there being a mountain in the area they had been traveling through. In fact, there shouldn't be one at all. This part of the country was pretty flat, and what hills did exist were smooth and rolling. Gentle. Not craggy and ragged like this mountain appeared to be.

"What is it? And please don't tell me it's a-" Whatever he had been going to say was cut short, as Chesterfield crested the path, gazing down in shock at the world stretching out far below him.

The mountain slanted sharply, bare most of the way before being sprinkled and then crowded with trees. The forest, which was so thick that nothing of the true ground showed, stretched on and on into the horizon, cast in a reddish-gold light of sunset.

"I...This isn't..." The sergeant was at a loss, stumbling over his words as his gaze widened, as though trying to take in the sight all at once. Finally, he settled for, "Where's our horses? Where's the  _forest_  for that matter? That's not the land we crossed...Is it?"

Blutch looked equally confused, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck as his eyes traveled the horizon to the right. "I-I don't know, but...What is  _that?_!"

Chesterfield directed his eyes quickly to the place Blutch was pointing, finding that he didn't have to look hard to see what had startled the corporal so badly.

A structure, or group of structures, towered high above the forest below. It was quite a distance, and still it was immense, almost as tall and large as the mountain itself, with mighty, straight crags reaching for the darkening sky. Chesterfield vaguely acknowledged that they were some sort of building, or maybe many buildings; they weren't organic enough to be natural. This thing had been built...by someone. It looked like it might be some sort of city, but unlike any he or Blutch had ever seen. No building could be that tall. Nothing man could make could be  _that_ big. And yet, there it stood, like some dark beast rising out of the earth.

A strong wind swept toward them, climbing up the slope and hitting them, rustling the cloth of their uniforms. Blutch shivered, his arms wrapping around himself at the unexpected chill, and Chesterfield noticed. Their clothes were still soaked he remembered, and it wouldn't do for either of them to get sick, or in his case sicker; not without an infirmary nearby.

"Let's make camp."

The corporal gave him an incredulous glance, turning his eyes away from the view. "Here?!"

"Yes, here! Where else?!" Chesterfield closed his eyes, trying to reign in his flaring temper, which only made him feel worse. After a moment, he opened his eyes, gazing up at the sky. It had turned a deep purplish-blue, a few stars beginning to crop up on the darker edges. He glanced back down to Blutch, who also seemed to have contained his previous anger. Now he just looked anxious; just as the sergeant felt himself. "Maybe in the morning we can figure out where we are. But now..." He sighed. "I gotta rest. We  _both_ do."

Blutch looked a little reluctant still, worried over the loss of his horse, but he nodded. "Guess we don't have much choice." He looked around them, shivering again when another gust of wind hit them. "Where?"

"Out of this confounded wind," the sergeant decided, trying to warm his hands by tucking them under his arms. "We'll need to build a fire, and I don't want the light and smoke to be in sight of...that." He gestured to the forbidden looking structure far below to their right in the distance. "In case whatever lives there...isn't friendly."

"Good idea."

They both gave the far off structure a nervous look before they began gathering kindle. The mountainside was littered with small twigs, and it wasn't long before they had aquired a fair pile of the little things. Clearing away the shrugs and moss, they set up a fire pit empty of anything flammable, other than their kindle. Rocks too were abundant, and Blutch easier got a fire started, having been lucky enough to find some flint. 

They didn't have anything to eat, to their immense disappointment, and neither could they find anything eatable in the wilderness around them. Chesterfield suggested climbing down the mountain to try and find some berries or fish, but then both men agreed that if the traveled all the way down the mountain, they might not have the strength to climb back up. Exhaustion was setting in from their strange ordeal, and they really had no qualms about simply falling asleep with empty stomachs. 

Night fell, bringing with it colder air, but a beautiful sky of stars. The wind wound down, thankfully, and the pleasant flame of the fire cast a warmth around it's circle, keeping the chill at bay. Even then, the air was crisp, and they had no blankets. Having stripped down to their underclothes, they had set lain the wet uniforms on a few boulders, close enough to the fire to dry but not close enough to risk them catching flame.

Blutch settled back against a particularly uncomfortable rock behind him, tucking his arms against himself to try and gather his own heat. "What are we going to do when we wake up, Sarge?"

"We'll think about that tomorrow," Chesterfield motioned, his voice stuffy and tired. He had a terrible headache. "Our situation isn't going to change much between now and dawn, so...try and get some sleep."

"Easy for you to say," the corporal huffed.

Chesterfield merely grunted, settling into a semi-comfortable position. "You don't have to sleep. You're taking first watch."

"First watch?! Oh, Sarge, wh-"

"Who's got the higher rank?"

A pause, and then a grudging, "You do."

"Then take first watch." The sergeant's tone gentled slightly. "I'll relieve you in a few hours."

"A few-! Ungh....Fine."

Chesterfield frowned as he lay down and turned his back to the fire. He had really expected more of a fuss from his friend. But, the again, maybe Blutch knew that he really couldn't last first watch. His cold was turning into something worse, and the ache in his leg, mixed with the pounding in his skull probably made him look as much like death as he felt. It didn't help that he was stressed. It annoyed him that they had so many unanswered questions. What they had witnessed could have happened. Chesterfield half expected to wake up in the morning to find it had all been a dream. All the same, whatever had happened, it had almost completely drained them of energy, the sergeant specifically. It wasn't long before Chesterfield had drifted off, leaving a still grumbling Blutch to keep watch over their site.

Tomorrow was another day.

They'd address everything then.

* * *

 

A warmer, gentle breeze blew away the lingering wisp of smoke rising from the charred embers of the campfire. It had done its work, keeping the two slumbering men alive through the chilling night, giving its life in exchange for theirs as the flames had burned and then slowly extinguished. The sun was warm, and the breeze was small enough that it did not chill against the bodies of the two, rousing soldiers.

After three years in the army, Chesterfield and Blutch were very much used to sleeping on the hard ground, and the stiffness in their limbs and backs was greeted with knowing groans and rubbing hands. Chesterfield paused, taking in his friend with a blink before something dawned on him slowly. 

"...You never woke me up for my shift..."

Blutch stood slowly to his feet, massaging a particularly painful stitch in his side. He blinked back, stupidly, before gaining a defensive expression. "Well, you never relieved me!"

"Blutch...you _know_ that's not how it works," the sergeant grumbled, his annoyance building. Not even a few minutes awake and they were practically ready to toss the other down the side of the mountain. "You fell asleep last night, at your post! Didn't you?! Of all the irrisponsable things-!"

"Eh, zip it."

Chesterfield spluttered, but was left stewing in his anger as Blutch stretched again, yawning as he took in the world around him. He checked his uniform, disappointed to find that his clothes were still mildly damp, but it was tolerable. The dew had undone some of their efforts, but it was surely better than what it had been before. The mud was still too moist to shake or brush off, but hopefully that would change as the day went on.

"Sunny," the corporal stated, squinting up at the clear blue sky above them. The sun was already shining brightly, though they couldn't actually see it, seeing as it was on the other side of the mountain, but they could witness its effects as the warm rays stretched out over them and down into the valley below. The sunlight glinted off the sides of the ominous structures in the distance, reflecting it like glass. A painful reminder that the day before had not been a dream. Blutch stared at it, trying to determine whether it truly was a man-made structure or not. He supposed it could be, but how it would be done was completely beyond his knowledge.

"Oohhh..."

The moan came from the sergeant, as the main groggily rose up from his place on the ground. Blutch watched somewhat impassively, taking in the fact that Chesterfield wasn't looking too well; his skin pale and breathing stuffy and rough. That cold, thanks to their adventures in the rain and sludge, added to sleeping out in the open air, had gotten worse. He looked so miserable that, for a moment, even Blutch felt a twinge of muted sympathy.

Chesterfield stood unsteadily, trying to suppress a light gasp as he realized how sore he was. He must have slept on a pebble or something, the little object digging into his back while he slept. The minute he moved though, his still present headache took instant president. "Unnngh..."

"...Sarge?"

"Nnh?" Looking up, blinking back the haze from his vision, he saw Blutch looking at him with what might have been concern. The sergeant instantly scowled. "What?"

The corporal shrugged, lazily shifting his gaze anywhere other than the sergeant. "Nothing."

Chesterfield winced, managing to stand up straight completely. He rubbed a hand down over his face, noticing that he was decidedly too warm. _Fever_. _Great_. _Time to change the subject._ "How'd you sleep?"

Blutch snapped his attention back to his friend's face, looking like he was biting back something sharp, before he answered in a neutral tone. "I've slept better."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Where do you think we are, Sarge?"

Chesterfield grunted, noticing with a frown that the change in position had made him feel nauseous. He couldn't tell whether his current state was because he was sick, or if it was a result of whatever it was they had endured the night before. He felt uncommonly shaky, and, studying Blutch with a sideways glance, the sergeant noticed that the smaller soldier also appeared to be holding himself stiffly, rigid with discomfort. Well, at least he knew he wasn't alone in his suffering.

"The same place we were last night," he grouched. "Listen, I don't know, but the first thing we need to do is find something to eat."

Blutch agreed whole-heartedly. But then felt the same discouragement he had felt the night before. "There still doesn't seem to be much to eat around here, any more than last night. These are all grasses; no berries."

"Well, there's got to be _something_ ," Chesterfield insisted. He picked up his semi-dry jacket and shrugged it on, buttoning it up. His shaking hands made it difficult, but he stubbornly ignored that. "We'll just have to take a look. Come on." He needed to distract himself. Maybe if he forced his body to act normally, the discomfort would fade.

Leaving their little encampment, the two men started their way around the mountaintop. Like Blutch had said, and did not hesitate to say again, there was little more than grass and weeds to be found. The trees that existed further down the mountain did not contain any fruits or nuts from what they could tell, and the shrubbery on the higher elevations were little more than briers. They spotted a few rabbits, which would have been great, accept their pistols were missing. They had still been attached to their saddles, and since their horses were nowhere in sight, that was that. They did, however, both have their sabers, which were still strapped to their belts. While that was comforting, to know that they could defend themselves if they had to, it really didn't help them when it came to hunting. All in all, it ended up being a fruitless endeavor, in which they spent a lot of much needed energy, and gained very little in return.

Chesterfield leaned against a boulder, breathing heavily. He was sweating, and had gone yet another shade paler than before. While normally in fantastic shape, the sergeant was finding the struggle just to stand distinctly tiring. He blamed his cold. That, and his leg had started to throb. He vaguely hoped it wasn't infected. 

"Sergeant?" Blutch spoke up, his worry actually beginning to show. "You alright?"

The sergeant gave him a weak scowl, wiping a hand across his brow to clear away the moisture. "Yeah....Just a little tired." He couldn't believe he had just admitted that, but at this point he really didn't care.

Blutch nodded slowly, understanding the hidden extra information in his friend's words. If Chesterfield was 'tired', it meant he was  _really_  sick. The corporal seated himself on a rock, folding his hands in his lap, as though preparing for some serious conversation. "Sarge...I was thinking."

"Y-Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. That's a n-novelty."

Blutch gave him a glare before continuing. "This mountain wasn't anywhere on the map General Alexander showed us, was it?"

"No." Chesterfield conjured up the memory of the map, mentally looking it over. "No, it wasn't; I'm pretty sure. I would have remembered seeing it."

Blutch nodded, pausing before continuing. "And we traveled to the East, for an hour or so. How far do you think that is in miles? At the pace we were going?"

"Three or four miles." Chesterfield's face became a frown of annoyance. "What does that matter?"

"Well, even if we managed six or seven miles, we still would have been on the map the general showed us."

"What are you getting at?" Chesterfield sighed tiredly.

Blutch stood, pacing a few steps to the left, away from the sergeant before turning back. "I'm just saying, that even if we were _lost_ , and went West, or North, or even _South_ instead of East, we'd still have been on the general's map. And there was no mountain on that map. So the question is..."

"Where'd the mountain come from?" Chesterfield finished. He gazed around them, taking it all in for the hundredth time that morning. "I _really_ don't know." He paused, thinking back to the pain that had overcome him before they had appeared on this mountainside. "Blutch, how did you feel? You know, when we first arrived here?"

The corporal blinked, though his expression was neutral. "Well, it hurt a lot."

"Right."

"And I felt really...sick."

"So did I."

"What do you think happened?"

Chesterfield didn't answer. A wave of nausea hit him, though it passed quickly. It was the kind of nausea that comes with a completely empty stomach. At least, he hoped that was all it was. "We really need something to eat," he repeated from his earlier comment. "If we're going to figure this all out, then we're really going to need something to build up our strength. You don't look all that well."

"Yeah, well. Neither do you."

Blutch stood to his feet, resolution in his eyes. "Well, I didn't survive three years of the war to die of hunger on a calm mountainside. Come, on, Sarge. Let's keep looking." He offered his hand, and, after a second's hesitation, Chesterfield accepted it and was carefully pulled off the boulder to stand on his own two feet.

The two continued their search, again finding nothing eatable. At this point, they were considering maybe munching on the grass itself. But that would be an extreme measure. A lot of the foliage around them they didn't recognize, and neither man had any desire to die of poisoning. With no help that they knew of in any direction, getting into physical trouble of any kind was too risky. Though, that sparse grass was looking better and better by the minute.

"This is ridiculous!" Blutch growled, roughly snapping a twig as they passed a dry, brittle bush. "What kind of wilderness doesn't have  _anything_  to eat?!"

"This one," Chesterfield clipped irritably, though he didn't have the energy to make it sound angry. "I don't think there's a single thing on this mountain other than grass and briers. Maybe we should go down into that forest after all."

Blutch gave the slope a unpleasant glance, eye flitting for a moment toward the strange structure in the distance. "What? And get any closer to that thing? No thanks. Besides, you wouldn't make it."

"Blutch, we _have_ _to_ eat. We're going to starve." Chesterfield's tone had grown so weak, it even startled the sergeant. He coughed, clearing his voice back to normal. "We have to find something."

"Fine!" The corporal irritably detached his saber from his side. He slid it from its sheath, the blade catching the sunlight. Face set with purpose, he rose and started off along the grasses.

"Where are you going?"

Blutch turned with a snarl, more of determination than frustration. "To get one of those rabbits."

"You can't hunt with a sword!"

"Oh, and you have a better idea?"

Chesterfield didn't. He opened his mouth to protest, but than quickly shut it again. Blutch seemed satisfied with that answer.

"I thought not. Stay here, Sarge. I'll be right back."

"No." The sergeant steadied himself internally and followed, feigning temper. "We are not separating. I'm coming too."

Blutch scowled. "What? You think I'll off and leave you?"

"I didn't say that!"

"Well, you were thinking it!"

Both men startled as the brush to their left shifted, the sound of something moving in the dry grass and leaves halting their argument. It sounded the right size for a rabbit, and the possibility being so close made both men fall into silence.

Hunger is a powerful drive. It can be subtle, easily ignored, and at other times it can be an all consuming beast. Both soldiers had heard of terrible stories, of people starving in the wilderness. Particularly, the accounts of the Donner Party, a group of pioneers back in 1846, came to mind. The travelers, lost and starving through the winter, had resorted to cannibalism, a fact that turned the stomachs of every man, woman, and child that heard of the incident. Blutch could remember hearing by word of mouth those accounts when he was younger, and how frightened and ill they had made him feel. Chesterfield also had the story forever lodged in his memory, and, though neither him nor the corporal mentioned their thoughts, they both silently promised themselves they would not let that happen to them.

Whatever creature lay in the bushes, suddenly bolted, rushing through the dry leaves away from them, and with a leap of his own, Blutch raced off after it.

"Blutch! Blutch, wait! Ah, dang it!" Chesterfield, with the prospect of a good meal within reach, gathered what strength he had and ran after his friend, trying to keep the corporal in sight.

Blutch couldn't see the rabbit, but he could hear it. It rushed to the left, then the right, zig-zagging in an almost panicked fashion. It lead him around the side of the mountain, though it never veered from the worn path that already existed. In fact, it never moved from his line of hearing. Blutch had never chased a creature on foot before, but he was pretty sure that it would normally be impossible to keep up. But he was doing just fine. And, somehow, that didn't seem right. But desperation, and the thrill of the chase, did not allow the corporal to give it much thought.

Suddenly, the noise stopped.

Blutch came to a sliding halt, panting and covered in dust from the run. He thought for a moment that maybe he really had lost the trail, but a slight rustle to the right told him no, the rabbit, or whatever it was had simply stopped. Was sitting still. The corporal licked his dry lips, trying not to breath too heavily He flinched when Chesterfield came stumbling up behind him, shushing the sergeant with a growl under his breath.

Chesterfield was regretting having decided to run. His breathing was ragged, but he obeyed Blutch's command to be silent, still hoping for a meal. He watched as the corporal tightened his grip on the saber. Blutch's body was so still and tensed, Chesterfield wondered if the corporal had done this sort of thing before. He really had no clue. Chesterfield knew more about Blutch's past than most, but even that wasn't much to go by.

Blutch inched forward, slowly, motioning for Chesterfield to do the same. They both crept forward, steady and braced for when Blutch would give the signal. The creature had not moved, they were certain. It lay behind the wall of thick shrubbery before them.

"Alight," Blutch whispered. "On my count...One...Two...Three!"

With a leap, both men crashed through the underbrush with a fierce cry of victory, fully prepared to catch the prey that very well might save their lives. But, instead, they were greeted by the edge of an immense, cavernous hole. It stretched before them like the yawning maw of some monstrous beast. All plant life petered out, leaving dark, rocky edges that plunged into darkness below.

"Oh my-!"

"Back up, back up, back up!"

Both men floundered to step away from the edge, so close that, had they leaped any further than they had, they would have fallen into the inky black. As it was, they were fighting against their own momentum, and tried to backtrack, their balance wavering. But something shifted behind them. A vine, or something of the like, that they had not noticed when they first landed on their feet, was all at once behind them, tripping them up. It threw off what little balance they had, and with cries of terror, both men fell forward into the dark pit before them.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Chesterfield could not believe he was alive.

The fall had been incredible, nothing but air around him for a solid minute before he must have blacked out. He didn't remember the impact, and for that he was rather grateful, but the feeling of his mind slamming back into his body replaced the sensation, startling him so badly he gasped loudly. The sound reverberated around him, answering him in multiple echoes on every side.

"O-Oh my g-g-" He swallowed, trying to get over the shock. He hadn't moved yet, but he realized slowly that he was lying on his back, facing upward, staring up at what felt like a hazy light. It was so far away, it was barely noticeable, and yet, to his eyes, it felt uncomfortably bright. Experimentally, he carefully moved the fingers of his right hand, then his arm, then both arms. While he felt sore, he didn't feel anything particularly agonizing. With a slow motion, the sergeant carefully eased himself up into a semi-sitting position. Nope; nothing seemed to be broken. That was a miracle, in and of itself. After a fall like that, he and Blutch should have died.

Chesterfield froze.

_Blutch!_

Casting his eyes worriedly around him, the sergeant easily discovered the corporal a little to his left, curled up in a fetal position, but clearly awake. Blutch was moaning softly, his hands griping down at his right leg, holding the limb so firmly that his hands were shaking.

_Not good!_

Chesterfield scrambled upright, his previous sickness and soreness forgotten in the adrenaline of their fall, and worry over his friend's health. "Blutch! Blutch, are you alright?!" The echo of his shout was far too loud, and both men flinched as it returned to them. Chesterfield waited until the echo faded, then spoke far more softly. "Are you hurt?"

Blutch squinted up at him through whatever pain he was enduring. "J-Just my leg...not too b-bad..." His voice was not the least bit convincing.

"Here, let me see."

"No." The corporal pushed away the sergeant's offer to help, gritting his teeth and starting to uncurl himself, releasing his leg with a hiss. "J-Just help me stand. I-I'm fine; just help me up."

With a solemn nod, Chesterfield took his friend's hand, pulling the diminutive soldier to his feet. He was forced to steady the corporal as he slumped sideways slightly, hand tightening in the sergeant's grasp as he fought back a cry of pain.

 _  
_ Blutch winced, leaning heavily into Chesterfield's hold, teeth gritted against the sharp pain in his leg. That had been quite a fall, and his body was still shaking, whether from the agony, or the thought of the impressive drop the two of them had managed to survive. Maybe both. Chesterfield's hands held firm, but careful, his face filled with concern as he finally managed to get the corporal on his feet. Or, at least, one foot. One leg was being held slightly off the ground, like a wounded paw, as Blutch allowed all his weight to rest on his uninjured limb.

"You alright?" The sergeant's voice carried with it its own strain, as though he too were in pain. Truth be told, he was even more sore then he had been before the fall, having landed, apparently, very hard on his side. He suspected that he would have a nasty bruise there for weeks. But he'd check on that later, his main concern at the moment being his friend. "Is it broken?"

"I-I don't think s-so, Sarge..." He trailed off for a moment as he tried to shift less of his weight against Chesterfield, cringing with the fiery burn it created almost all the way up his leg and spine. "Ah!...B-But it hurts p-pretty bad..."

"You think you can walk?"

"...I-I'll try."

And they did, moving forward a single step, together, but even then the result was the corporal gasping and nearly collapsing to the ground. " _Gah!_ N-Nope. Nope, not g-gonna work..." Blutch sagged, reaching with his free hand for the ground beneath him as he was lowered once again. The motion was so sudden, he almost dragged the sergeant down with him. They ended up back right where they had started.

"Alright," Chesterfield muttered, gazing about the darkness around them. Above, far above, there was the slightest distortion of hazy light that indicated where they had fallen down. The sergeant felt his heart sink. There was no way they were going to be able to be able to climb back out the way they had come. He couldn't even see the walls, and the light above was little more than a dim circle far away, seemingly detached from anything physical. "Alright, we'll sit here for a moment."

Blutch nodded wearily, grimacing as he shifted his leg into a position that didn't hurt  _as_ bad. If he stretched it out in front of him, knee slightly bent, the painful throbbing sensation was a little less pronounced, though not by much. With care, he began slowly rolling the material of his pant leg up, revealing his bare skin beneath. Even in the half light, the sight made both cavalrymen wince. The skin was red and raw, some places to the point of bleeding, a deep red that dripped down against the pale white of the leg, almost standing out as black against it. It could only be assumed that the corporal had hit something on the way down, or possibly when he landed. Blutch could only stare at the horribly scratched limb, a weak murmur escaping him in a breath of strained air. "Ow."

Chesterfield shifted closer, hands hovering in front of him over the corporal's injury, but not daring to touch it; not until he could think straight and knew what to do. He had seen Blutch with worse, much worse, and had even had worse himself, but somehow, trapped deep within a cavern after falling an indeterminable distance, everything felt far more serious. "That...That needs to be cleaned and bound," he observed, looking around as though the supplies to do so would simply just appear. Blutch couldn't help the sarcastic tone that tainted his voice.

"...Yeah, no k-kidding..."

"Alright, hold on." The sergeant knelt forward, standing straight on his knees as he began unbuttoning his own uniform, fingers trembling and refusing to cooperate correctly. That fall had really shaken him up, and even though he couldn't remember the impact of his body hitting the floor, it was a concept he really had no wish of remembering at all. They were alive and that was all that mattered. Finally, after a struggle, he unhitched the last of the little, round, brass buttons, pulling the blue uniform jacket off his shoulders and placing it on his lap. Fishing around in his pockets, he soon came up with his switch-knife, taking it up and putting all his concentration into steadying his hands. He couldn't afford to cut himself by mistake; there had been enough injuries. Taking the jacket, he began cutting strips in the material, making a small set of blue fabric bandages. When the deed had been done, Chesterfield's coat was no longer anything but rag, but that was of little importance. He shifted even closer, the strips in his hands, nodding to the corporal's leg. "Let me see it."

Blutch complied with slight hesitation, stretching the limb out into his sergeant's reach, teeth already gritted against the pain he knew was coming. He knew dressing the injury would be made worse for him if he watched, and so the corporal made sure to look anywhere but his own leg. Blutch glanced upward at the hazy light above; the only light, in fact, that existed. "I c-can't believe we s-survived tha- _Agh! Tssss._ "

Chesterfield nodded, wincing in sympathy at his friend's cry and hiss of pain as he wound the first strip of cloth around the injury. He tried to help Blutch by continuing the conversation immediately. "Me too. Must be all these flowers...They must have broken our fall."

Blutch looked down at the bed of yellow plant life with a sense of embarrassment. He hadn't even noticed them. Not that he could really be blamed for that, he had had other things to worry about, but now he took in the vibrant, yellow petals. They were incredibly soft and thick, like a mattress. He glanced up above them again, and the height made him doubt very much that the flowers alone could have saved them. But, seeing as they were alive, it didn't really matter to him how it had happened; he was simply grateful.

The sergeant worked as quickly and as carefully as he could manage, wrapping the strips around Blutch's leg until every bit of damaged skin had been covered. Blutch had lowered himself onto his back at some point, staring up at the entrance they both knew must be there, even if they couldn't see it. Chesterfield was slightly worried by the corporal's sudden lack of energy. "Hey, you alright? You aren't going to pass out, are you?" He tried to make it teasing in tone, but his concern still managed to break through clear enough to be heard.

"M'try'n not to," was Blutch's slurred answer.

That was not the answer Chesterfield had been hoping for. "Are you hurt somewhere else?" He doubted the pain from the leg would be enough to cause unconsciousness.

"No." The corporal raised his arm to drap it over his eyes, his voice shaky. "I...I just need a minute, ok, Sarge?"

The sergeant nodded. "Of course." And he didn't mean anything bad by that. He himself had only just finally managed to calm his shaking down, and he hadn't even been hurt. Blutch's senses were probably on overload right now. Chesterfield knew if he gave his friend that required minute, he'd be back up and going soon enough. As it was, he was perfectly happy sitting where they were now. Chesterfield looked around him, peering into the darkness. From what he could see, the only beam of light that existed came from above, lighting up only the area they now were. Everything else was a dreadful black. The sergeant frowned. There had to be a way out of this cavern, even if they couldn't go the way they had come. Sitting around was what his body really, truly needed right now, Chesterfield knew, but his mind wouldn't let him. He wanted to get out of this place and back to the war as soon as possible. General Alexander were counting on them to make that run, if they weren't there...Chesterfield quickly got to his feet.

"Blutch, you stay here," he addressed his reclining friend. "I'm going to see if I can find a path or something, alright?"

"...A'right..."

He nodded, taking a deep breath as he took several slow steps out of the circle of light and into the darkness. It was like another world entirely; the warmth from the sun above disappearing immediately and being replaced by chilling cold. It was a damp kind of cold, and it hung heavily in the air like most caves are apt to feel like. He could hear the faintest dripping of water, coming far, far to his right.

"At least there's water here," he muttered. Food would be another problem entirely.

He made sure to glance back behind him from time to time, to ensure he didn't lose sight of that beam of light that felt like safety and home compared to the inky black. He was afraid that, if he stepped out of sight of it, he would never find his way back. And he needed to get back. Blutch would need his help.

As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he found that he could actually see a little better than he had expected. He began to pick out shapes, almost running into a few. Gathering his courage, he reached out a hand to touch one as he passed, finding it to be some sort of carved, stone pillar. Well, that at least meant that there had been people down here at some point. There wouldn't be structures down there if there wasn't also a way out. He just had to find it. He discovered many more pillars, along with other worn and decaying structures. This was obviously some kind of ruin, of what he hadn't a clue. Maybe a town or village, somehow buried down through the years. Just their luck that he and Blutch would fall down into it.

Chesterfield risked another glance behind him and halted abruptly. The circle of light where he had left Blutch was now little more than a hazy blotch behind him. If he continued, he would lose sight of it for sure. Casting a final glance into the darkness, he turned and began picking his way through the ruins, heading for the beam of warm safety. But he hadn't gone four paces before a sound, like shuffling, reached his ears, making him freeze again. There was silence, and then...There! There it was again; a sound like something shifting beside him, among the pillars. It could have been anything really, in a place like this. Chesterfield could have easily dismissed it as a squirrel, or a mouse, maybe even a bird; but then he heard a noise that most certainly could not come from any of those things.

He heard a laugh.

A low, unfriendly laugh.

"Who's there?!" He couldn't keep the anxiety out of his voice. the nervousness that had steadily been growing within him was almost at its peak. He kept turning in place, afraid that with every turn of his back something might lash out and hurt him. He should have stayed with Blutch! Why in the world had he gone off alone?! "Show yourself!" His words were met with another low, echoing chuckle.

 ** _"Oh, you are an impatient one, aren't you?"_**  a voice hummed in amusement, seemingly coming from every direction. The darkness here was almost complete, and it was only by a slight glowing haze that the sergeant could truly see anything. _ **"Oh well, I suppose that means that your soul isn't of a light blue nature. What a shame. I like blue."**_

 _ **  
**_ Chesterfield began to back up the way he had come, intending to make a run back to the lighter part of the ruins, where Blutch was waiting for him, but he hadn't even taken three steps before something brushed up against the back of his leg. With a gasp he lurched forward, eyes frantically trying to see through the semi-light as he squirmed, as though he had been touched by something distinctly slimey. Truth be told, it hadn't been, and even if it had he wouldn't have been able to feel it through the material of his pants. But whatever it had been, it had sent a sensation of creeping fear all the way up his limb and spread through the rest of him, like a dark, swirling poison. He felt as though he needed to cleanse himself of the feeling, before it became more than he could stand.

 ** _"Aw, I'm sorry,"_**  the voice came again, child-like in its simplistic manner, but anything but harmless in tone. The laugh was cruel and filled with rapture in the sergeant's unbridled fear as Chesterfield panted against the anxiety rising within him.

 **_  
_ ** **_"I didn't mean to startle you. But since you're already scared, I see little reason to keep pretending. Let's make something very clear..."_ **

There was a sound like the creaking of the deck of a ship, accompanied by the swishing of what could have been wind in lush, green trees, before something reached out and grabbed a hold of the Chesterfield's arm, jerking it back fiercely.

 **_  
_ ** **_"I am definitely something to be scared of, Human!"_ **

" _Agh!_  What the-?!" Chesterfield's breath was cut off as something slammed into his gut, wrapping around his chest and middle before he could pull away or fight. He gave a strangled gasp, managing to pull in a little air, but that was it, as the coils wrapped and pressed into him, tightening with every second. He couldn't see what had grabbed him, but it was strong, a feeling like iron rope crushing him from every side. His feet weren't even touching the ground anymore, kicking uselessly at the air as he struggled to breath.  _"Gah! Ah!"_

One arm was pinned uselessly to his side, but the other, which had somehow managed to stay free, gripped and clawed at the constricting waves of pressure, frantic to ease the pain and remove the hold that was depriving his lungs. But that did very little. The sergeant could feel his consciousness wavering, darkness even darker than the world around him threatening to ensnare him as the pressure continued to grow. His ribs were threatening to break, any moment now he expected to hear them snap. At this point it would almost be a mercy if the thing snapped his spine and killed him. The fight was hopeless, and as his eyes started to flutter shut against the agony, Chesterfield resigned that this was probably what was going to-

"Let him go!"

There was a sound like a knife slashing through wet salami, and then Chesterfield found himself face first on the ground, gasping for breath and fumbling to grip his chest to try and ease the burning pain running all through it. He was vaguely aware that the 'thing' was screaming, coiling back like a brood of vipers with snaking bodies as thick as small tree trunks. His vision was foggy as he fought off unconsciousness, but he realized there was something standing between him and his attacker, though who or what it was was not yet clear in his mind. He was still in a panic, struggling to sit up and crawl away, but finding that he could do neither. His throat was burning, each swallow like sandpaper as he finally was able to welcome air into his lungs. He squinted up at the blurred colors in the dark, trying to make out the shape. Blue and darkness swirled in confusion as he struggled to understand, before it cleared suddenly, and his gaze stared up in shock at what he saw.

A plant, an intricate web of vines and thorns, leaves and roots, had sprouted out of the soil of the ruins. But this was unlike any flora he had ever witnessed. It moved and writhed as though it were alive, the terrible screeching noise continuing like a dreadful drone. The plant was larger than a house, the long, snaking limbs reaching out into the darkness and above, until they were lost from sight. The dirt was being torn up as the thing flailed, and Chesterfield realized with a pounding heart that it had been this monstrosity that had nearly killed him. The idea made him feel sick, but not nearly as sick as the sight of the small figure standing between him and the creature out of their nightmares.

"B-Blutch!  _Agh!-eh..._ " He tried to rise, but found he still couldn't, sinking back to the ground in a cringing crouch. "W-What are you...y-you doing?! Get out o-of here!"

The corporal looked scared out of his mind, his saber drawn and dripping with what appeared to be sap. It oozed down the blade, sticking in the groves and scratches that the sword had gathered over the years. Blutch was mostly supporting himself on only one leg, and how he had managed to run to Chesterfield's aid was beyond the sergeant's knowledge, but it was very obvious that doing so had robbed him of a lot of strength. The smaller man's blade was quivering with the excretion of just holding it up, pointed at the snaking vines of the monstrous plant. It seemed to be just about all he could do, having no energy to do anything else.

The voice came again, out of the darkness, not sounding nearly as mad as it should have.  ** _"Oops. Big mistake. You really think a little blade can hurt me?"_**

There was a swish, and Blutch just barely managed to dodge another swipe of the thing. "It's a start!" the corporal shot back, ignoring the shaking in his knees and the jolt of pain when he accidentally put weight on his injured limb. He shifted back, until he was standing close to the sergeant, still brandishing the weapon unsteadily. That dreadful chuckle filled the air again. 

**_"Hoho! Chara's really gone and done something great this time! This is going to be so much fun! I can barely contain myself."_ **

**_  
_** Chesterfield tried again to stand, but couldn't, his eyes scrunched as he focused them dizzily on the ground before him, just trying to breath. Something was wrong with his ribs; numbness beginning to turn into a wrenching pain. Whatever that thing was, it was strong, and had crushed something. All Chesterfield could hope was that it wasn't anything to dangerous or important. Through his blurred vision, as well as the dim blue of their surroundings, the sergeant realized something was snaking toward them. Toward Blutch's foot, specifically. The sergeant watched it blankly, not making the connection at first, until he realized with a start what it was. A vine-like object. Just like what had grabbed him, only far smaller.

"Blutch! L-Look out!"

With a flinch, Blutch stumbled to his right, unfortunately in the very direction Chesterfield had not wanted him to go. The corporal stepped righ onto the vine, which shot up from the ground to tightly twist around his leg. Blutch gave a gasp, then swung his saber, slicing the vine and freeing himself. But that did very little good, for the moment that vine was cut off, five more struck from the darkness like vipers. One tried to latch onto the corporal's wrist, the one that held his sword, attempting to foil any further usage of the blade, but Blutch was quick, lifting it out of the way just in time. He would have smiled triumphantly then, if not for the searing pain in his leg that caused him to scream.

A vine, one he had missed, had wrapped itself like a vice around his injured leg, pulling it out from under him with an agonizing tug. He flipped over, gravity all at once unimportant, before he felt a pain in his head and could have sworn he saw stars. He vaguely realized he had hit his skull on something hard, but the pain and nausea that it caused rendered him only half conscious. He couldn't even move as he felt the vines slowly twisting around him. He could vaguely hear Chesterfield yelling at him, telling him to move, but his mind and body were no longer communicating.

Blutch passed out.

 ** _"Aw,"_**  the voice hissed out with disappointment, and Chesterfield though he saw a hint of yellow in the shadows.  ** _"I broke him. Oh, well, at least I have you to play with."_**

Chesterfield felt something curling back around his middle and jerked, hand flying to tear it away as it tightened. His ribs were already encased in fiery pain, and he felt that he would not be able to handle any more rough handling. Not that he had much choice. The vine coiled up around his chest, squeezing until he let out a cry, which broke off into a gasp. It was then that Chesterfield knew.

He was going to die.

Suddenly there was a sound like a ocean wave against rock, and the ruins were illuminated in a bright, hazy light. Chesterfield thought he heard a voice, a different voice, not belonging to him or Blutch. It was strong, and loud, though he was too far gone in his panic and pain to hear what it was saying. His mind was drifting back and forth between consciousness, and his vision had blurred beyond being even useful anymore. He heard a scream, and the vines around him tightened forcefully, and then suddenly let go, dropping the sergeant to the ground with a thump.

* * *

Toriel had never felt so frightened and angry in her life. Flowey was a horror she had long since thought was gone from her life, and yet here she was again, facing off against his cruel power. She knew what he was;  _who_  he was, and yet the hatred for what he had become stuck with her. He was a soul-less, heartless, cruel anomaly, and the fact that he was before her now was almost overwhelming.

The goat-like woman stood braced, tears in her eyes, having just sent the largest wave of her magic she had used in over a year. It swept forward, burning against the vines of the terrible plant, causing Flowey to release the two humans he had been in the process of torturing. Asgore backed up her magic with a bit of his own, furthering the flower's damage.

 ** _"Fools! This is not your game to play!"_**  Flowey hissed in rage, though they could not see him. The vines had retreated, disappeared into the surrounding darkness. Flowey was leaving, his voice getting further away as he retreated.  ** _"You'll regret it...I'll make sure of it...You'll see..."_**  And then he was gone.

Toriel blinked, realizing her hand was still raised from her attack, glowing with her energy. She was breathing heavily, feeling her heart and soul pounding mercilessly in her chest. She terminated her magic, feeling her body shaking with the exertion her power had taken to manifest. She turned her head up to Asgore, finding that he too was breathing raggedly, but he reached for her hand falteringly, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Toriel shut her eyes, squeezing them shut as her voice trembled.

"So it's true...She really did reset..."

Asgore held her hand a little tighter. "I'm...I'm afraid so."

They remembered. They remembered the Surface, Frisk, their wonderful life there; but they also remembered Chara. They remembered the reset, something that had never happened before to their knowledge. As far as they understood, Frisk and Sans, and apparently Flowey, were the only ones who ever remembered that sort of thing. But, it would seem, this time was different.

Toriel breathed a sigh to steady her nevers, her attention now on the two humans she and Asgore had spotted in Flowey's grasp. Both were lying terribly still on the rough ground of the Ruins, and at first she was afraid they might be dead. But then, the larger of the two, flinched, slightly, and Toriel was rushing to his side immediately. "Look after the other one, dear!" she ordered, coming to kneel beside the moaning human in front of her.

Chesterfield winced, curling in around himself as the pain in his chest sent wave after wave of senseless agony all through him. His hearing was messed up, everything around him muffled and low, but he recognized the gentle fall and rise of a voice at his side. He didn’t understand their words, but, then again, he didn’t need to. The soft touch against his arm told him that the individual was friendly, and only wanted to help. Having been injured in the field of battle more than once, he recognized the feeling of relief and surrender that came with rescue, and he settled back against the ground in acceptance of it. He allowed himself to be gently turned on his back, his breath shallow and short, for with every intake of air he took his lungs felt as though they would be pierced through. He must have broken a rib or two; that was the only explanation he could consciously come up with at the moment. The bone was probably out of alignment, jutting out of place in a way that he was in danger of impaling his own lungs. Well, that settled it. Such an injury was beyond help at this point, and in their situation. He and Blutch were deep underground, in some strange place. The likelihood of anyone having surgical skills here was very, very small. The thought made his mind roll into a mild panic, his own pained gasps mixing with the warm set of hands that was carefully checking him over, speaking soothingly to him. He wasn’t getting enough air, and with every moment he felt the fear of suffocation threatening him, but found himself helpless to do anything about it.

Toriel knelt by the struggling human’s side, pausing only a moment before she began using her magic to carefully determine what was wrong with him. He seemed in respiratory distress, his breaths coming out in desperate puffs as each inhale was far too short, cutting off when the breath brought only pain. The sight filled the goat-like monster with compassion and worry, touching her loving soul. She gently held the human down as he tried to rise, or curl up, speaking gently as she prepared her healing power. His ribs had been crushed, not to the point of death, but in a way that, if something wasn’t done about it soon, death might be the end result. Toriel, sadly, did not know a lot about human biology. What she  _did_  know was from her experiences taking care of Frisk, which had never been on such a serious scale. But this was a human male, and an adult at that, and she suspected that there was more than likely a difference between the two. But ribs were ribs, in her opinion, and anything at this point would be better than waiting and letting the poor thing suffer. And so, with a slow initiation, Toriel willed her magic to travel through her soul, down her arms to her hands, and, in turn, into the heaving chest beside her. He stiffened for a moment, unfamiliar with the invading feeling of magic, before he relaxed, obviously relieved.

Healing was something that had always been a blessing. The power to take away pain was a gift that Toriel never took for granted. She had used it ever since her childhood, back in the days long before life had grown so complicated; before the cursed resets. Experience told her to transfer the healing slowly, a bit at a time, so as not to overwhelm the human, lest it make him worse rather than better. She concentrated on his ribs, three or four of which she knew were horribly twisted, in a manner none should ever be. In a way, she was surprised the human had survived it at all. As her soul mixed with his, she was surprised, if not pleased to feel his courage and will to live echoing back. His chest began to glow, much as Frisk’s always had in answer to her healing, only this was orange rather than red. Toriel smiled at the implications that color represented.

This human’s soul was full of BRAVERY.

A feeling of warmth and comfort swept over Chesterfield, a blessed respite from the numbing agony. It wasn’t necessarily pleasant, as it seemed to knot and wrestle in his chest, brushing against his ribs in a way that he expected to hurt. But it didn’t, and the feeling of piercing bone against lung diminished, as his insides seemed to shift, rearranging themselves so that everything was back where it was supposed to be. His breathing, though still rough and dry, became deeper, and his mind cried out in thanks that it was finally getting the air it had needed so badly. Eyes still shut, the sergeant focused only on the wonderful sensation of breathing freely, feeling that healing mystery inside of him leave his chest, sweeping through him once again as though in search of something more to fix. The ache in his back was taken away with a warm tingle, and the chaffing and scratches the vines had left on his arm stung a moment longer before disappearing completely. For the first time in what had felt like an eternity, Chesterfield let the tension sink from his being, letting out a shuddering sigh as he allowed himself to go completely limp. It wasn’t quite unconsciousness, but it certainly wasn’t quite sleep. He didn’t really care, and simply let his mind be carried into it; a place where he could rest in safety, if only for a short time. That healing presence would take care of him for now.

Toriel smiled, breaking her hold on the man before gently removing her hands from him. He was relaxed now, breathing deeply, if not still a little hoarsely; and the pinched expression of pain had left his face entirely, leaving him looking very relieved, if not still very pale. “Is that better?” she asked gently, her anxiety more now of the human’s state of mind. A near death experience could not simply be brushed away like the leaves of autumn. He nodded weakly in answer, eyes still shut and head facing away from her slightly. Toriel nodded in return, despite the fact that the human would not be able to see the action. She sat in silence, studying his face, curiosity getting the best of her. A human child falling to the Underground was one thing, but a human adult…that was far more unusual. Even more so that there were two of them. Her mind wandered to their current situation, the fact that she and Asgore both remembered the reset, and what had happened before it. They needed to find Sans, since the small skeleton knew Chara best. Perhaps he would have an idea what was happening. Had this happened before? Had these humans fallen before, or was this the strange twist that Chara had spoken of? And, most importantly in Toriel’s mind, what had happened to Frisk? She was terribly frightened, for all their safety, but she knew better than to panic. That would get them no further than the dark despair around them.

Remembering again that there were in fact two humans, Toriel turned to Asgore worriedly, looking at the human her husband was attempting to heal. It was the smaller one, and, unlike his companion, he was totally unconscious. From her husband’s magic, she realized that Asgore’s focus was the human’s head, where the smallest trickle of blood was slowly sliding down the side of the human’s face. Asgore’s expression was of intense concentration, and the frown indicated that things were taking a bit more effort than it had first been assumed.

“Is that one alright?” she called gently, relenting the action when her own human startled slightly at her voice, though his eyes remained closed.

Her husband shook his head with a tisk of worry. “He was hit pretty hard, my dear…One of the vines caught him close to the temple.” He seemed concerned, and Toriel remembered that such an injury could be quite dangerous, especially to a human creature. Her time on the surface, acting as mother to Frisk, had paid off in that respect. Wanting to know what to do, no matter the situation, in an effort to always ensure her human daughter’s safety, Toriel had studied human medicine and anatomy extensively. Standing carefully, making sure not to disturb the larger human, the goat-like woman made her way to her husband’s side. She knelt down, listening to the shallow breaths.

“Perhaps, it is more than his mind that is injured?”

Asgore shook his head, still concentrating. “I checked him over, but the only injury I can find is here.” He motioned to the side of the human’s forehead.

Toriel gently reached forward, inspecting the wound herself. She frowned at this human’s lack of hair. She remembered that humans tended to lose their hair with age, but this man looked still rather young to have gained such a loss. And he was incredibly small, probably only a good ten inches or so taller than Sans. He was like a man in a child’s body. She found it extremely endearing. “Here. Allow me to try.” Her husband moved aside, knowing that her skills in healing were far stronger than his own. Toriel initiated her magic, just as she had done with the other human, letting the power run through her and into him. He shifted slightly, and she slowed down her speed, not wanting to overwhelm him. She was shocked by the extent such a small injury had inflicted, but understood. It appeared the human had sustained a minor concussion, which was so much harder to correct than broken ribs, but not impossible. Her soul mixed with that of the small human, but she was surprised, and slightly startled, when his shied away from her own. It was as though his essence had felt hers and reeled back, afraid. But then, slowly, she found it again, backed in a corner so to speak, before gently mixing with her own. She was relieved, for if they had not mixed, she wouldn’t have been able to heal him. It was like his consent, and without it she would have been powerless to help him. She smiled at the flow of purple soul.

This human’s soul was filled with PERSEVERANCE.

After a moment or so more, discovering Blutch's shredded leg and fixing that as well, Toriel shifted back to sit on her heels, looking down at the small human before her. "That is all I can do, at least until he is awake. Then we shall know whether or not there is still something left to heal." She glanced back over at Chesterfield. "That one should be fine, but we really must get them somewhere more comfortable. We do not know whether Flowey will return."

Asgore nodded, perhaps a little uncomfortably. "How...How shall we move them? And where shall we bring them?"

"If time really has been reset, my home in the Ruins should still be well kept. We can go there." Toriel carefully reached forward, shifting her arms beneath the small form before lifting him up, standing to her feet and holding the human as though he were a child. He leaned weakly against her with a moan, and she smiled gently. "As for how to get them there, carrying is the only way. I can carry this one, but the other may require more strength." She looked at Asgore pointedly.

Taking the silent command in stride, the largest monster stepped around Toriel to stand by the bigger human's side, looking down at him with a sense of uncertainty. After a few false starts, Asgore bent down, taking this human up in much the same way as his wife had the first. It was a little uncomfortable, but the human did look so very pale, white button-down shirt ripped and soiled. That made the indignity of it all worth the effort. Asgore's kind soul went out to the human's situation.

"Let's get you someplace safe."

 


End file.
